Colleen Ernst

Ernst was born and attended public schools in Burlington, Iowa. She went to Northwestern University, originally studying music as an organ performance major.

“She really lost interest almost immediately,” her husband Bill Radl told me. “It was the early 1970s, people were having fun, it was a good time. Then she discovered art history. She took studio art classes, but that wasn’t really a primary motivation for her.”

She was fascinated by art, but also the history of how art was made and the artists that made it. Ernst stayed in Chicago after graduation, but needed to find a career to support herself, and decided she could teach art. She came back to Iowa and got her teaching certificate at the University of Iowa. She then got a job teaching art, primarily at the local Ernest Horn Elementary School.

“She spent her entire career at Horn,” Radl said. “She also worked at other schools, because that’s how they dealt with art teachers.”

Ernst’s teaching practice was also a form of performance. By wearing a white lab coat (“borrowed” from the UI medical school, where her husband worked) and calling herself “Dr. Art,” she took her place among the handful of local self-proclaimed doctors, including “Dr. Alphabet” poet David Morice and “Dr. Science” comedian Dan Coffey. She enjoyed her students, but was less enthusiastic about having to travel between multiple schools for classes. Where most teachers have prep time built into their schedules, the art teachers in Iowa City had (and still have) drive time instead.

As she donned the lab coat and taught students about Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso and Frida Kahlo, Ernst began to make her own work. She had painted a bit before college, but her real growth as an artist came during her teaching career. Many of her works have a child’s inspired messiness, as though her daily high-contact engagement with students gave her better access to her own “child’s mind.” Though this child-like approach led to abstract paintings, most of her work had specific meaning, reflecting her life as a mother and teacher.

Colleen Ernst lived a life of service, teaching her pupils and raising her own kids. She attacked her art with purpose and a vivid, unruly imagination. The art world in the global sense always honors a few extraordinary artists, whose work becomes ridiculously expensive. The work of someone local, someone engaged with the community, isn’t as acclaimed but is every bit as vital.

SOURCE - https://littlevillagemag.com/the-importance-of-being-colleen-ernst/ (Sept 2025)